On this page you will find opportunities to contribute to research, either as a participant, reviewer or researcher.  If you need help with your research, please email a summary of your study and what help you are looking for to mail@mhpn.co.uk, and we will post it here.

Posted 21/07/10

Message from Transplant Sport UK

 

As part of a campaign to raise awareness of Transplant Sport UK and its annual events, we are conducting a survey on 'Attitudes Towards Organ Donation and Recovery Through Sport', the results of which will be used to promote the charity and encourage people to sign-up to the NHS organ donor register.

The survey is aimed at a broad range of people from those who have had a transplant, donor families and health professionals to those who rarely even consider the issue of organ donation.  To make this a success, we need your help.

Please could you complete the below online survey and also forward it on to friends, family and colleagues.   If you have a Facebook page, perhaps you could post it there too?

Please click here to access the survey.

It is really important that we not only get a wide range of people responding but enough people responding to make the findings credible.  Of course, once we have the results in we will be sharing the findings with you - as well as the media - which in turn you will be able to share with those you forwarded on the survey to.

In anticipation of your co-operation, many thanks for your support from everyone at TSUK and the British Transplant Games. 

Posted 20/07/10

Re: Theories of behaviour change.

 

The following message is from James Cane, a Researcher in the Centre for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness (CORE) at University College London (UCL).

 

Dear Midlands Health Psychology Network Member,

 

As you will be aware there are a large number of theories and theoretical constructs relevant to behavioural change. However, often those designing interventions to change behaviour do not draw on these to inform their interventions. This is partly due to the plethora of overlapping constructs and theory. In order to make theory more useable across a variety of disciplines, a consensus-based theoretical framework was produced by the "Psychological Theory group" which is reported in Michie, S., Johnston, M., Lawton, R., Parker, D., Walker A. (on behalf of the Psychological Theory Group) (2005)[1]. This is being widely used in intervention design; we therefore consider it important to validate this framework in order to make it a more robust tool for researchers. If you are not familiar with this work, we would like to invite you, as an expert in behaviour change, to help us validate this framework by completing a simple card sorting task.

 

The task will involve sorting and rating theoretical constructs of behaviour change into certain groups and we hope that you will find the task a stimulating and interesting endeavour. Our pilot has suggested that participation in the study will take about an hour. There are two versions of this task available; a paper version and an online version.

 

The paper version is available immediately and should you wish to complete this version it can be sent out within a week of you replying to j.cane@ucl.ac.uk (please provide us with your preferred postal address). All materials for the paper version of the task are sent out in freepost return envelopes.

 

The online task is currently being developed and should be ready at the end of August. Should you wish to complete the online version please send us your preferred email address to j.cane@ucl.ac.uk and we will send you a link to the task once it is available online.

 

At this stage, we only require people who have expertise in psychological theories of behavioural change and who are not familiar with the theoretical framework reported in Michie et al (2005). If you do not fit these criteria we would be very grateful if you could suggest other people you think would be appropriate for us to approach.

 

If you would be willing to take part in this validation processes, would like to suggest others who you think might be interested in taking part, or have anything you would like to discuss in relation to the theory validation project please contact me at j.cane@ucl.ac.uk or telephone on 0207 6795947. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

 

Kind regards, James Cane On behalf of Susan Michie, Marie Johnston, Daniel Wight, Martin Eccles & Rebecca Lawton

 

[1] Michie, S., Johnston, M., Abraham, C., Lawton, R., Parker, D., Walker, A., et al. (2005). Making psychological theory useful for implementing evidence based practice: a consensus approach. Qual Saf Health Care, 14(1), 26-33. --